How to Calm ‘Busy’ Nonprofit Overwhelm Syndrome
When I managed a nonprofit team I inevitably had staff who struggled to meet deadlines. So I’d ask them to keep track for a week of how they found themselves spending their time. My boss, generously, even made funds available to send folks to time management courses.
It seldom worked.
Because most traditional time management advice involves cutting out unnecessary activities. Some of this is possible, but many nonprofit workers simply have too much to do in too little time. The “unnecessary” is sometimes hard to find.
Recently I happened on an article in the New York Times by Adam Grant, Productivity Isn’t About Time Management. It’s About Attention Management. In it, he talked about someone who couldn’t find any tasks to drop from his calendar:
“This is going to sound like a joke, but it’s not,” he confessed. “My only idea is to drink less water so I don’t have to go to the bathroom so many times.”
Oh, dear.
But Grant offered an interesting solution; a reframing of the conundrum. He suggests that time management is actually part of the problem, not a solution.
Details